India COVID-19 Crisis: Explained

graphic by alexa kroin

This is not the first, nor the last, article you have read that will explain how bad COVID-19 has been for everyone over the past year. For many people, it seems like the worst of the pandemic is over. Unfortunately, this is a sentiment that only a few countries share. So, with rising cases and deaths, bed and oxygen shortages, and the World Health Organization labeling this new COVID-19 variant as a global risk, Jerk feels it is important to discuss the current crisis unfolding in India.

So how did this all start? India, after all, was doing exceptionally well in lowering its infection rates, with daily rates falling to below 10,000 in early Feb. After several weeks of low numbers, India’s Health Minister declared in early March that the nation was in the “endgame” of the pandemic.

With this belief came relaxed social distancing rules and, importantly, the government allowing religious festivals to happen, attracting millions of people to “superspreader events.” Then, the inevitable happened. COVID-19 cases grew exponentially, and at its peak, India saw a seven-day average of almost 400,000 new daily cases. 

Vaccine distribution has also been a major problem in the country. With government sentiments being that they are basically out of the pandemic, and officials also believing that they have reached herd immunity, only two percent of the population was vaccinated at the start of the spike in March.

With these new cases, supply shortages in hospitals also became an issue. Only about 34% of India’s recent COVID-19 deaths have occurred in hospitals. In addition to a lack of hospital beds, oxygen shortages have been detrimental. Desperate patients are paying more than 10 times the hospital’s prices for black-market oxygen cylinders. 

For weeks, officials in India have been calling for a national lockdown, only to have fallen upon deaf ears. Thankfully, there is relief on the way. The United Kingdom is sending ventilators and oxygen concentrators (machines that extract oxygen from the air when hospitals have shortages); the United States is lifting trade bans, allowing India to manufacture more vaccines; and India plans to build more than 500 oxygen processing plans across the country.

Most recently, numbers have been dropping slightly, which may mean the spike is falling. However, the damage is irreversible, leaving India and its citizens with scars that will take years, if not decades, to heal.